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There's a general misconception between being productive and being effective. One can fill their days by completing many mindless tasks and consider themselves

• tylerhou 8y ago
  > This is quite similar to the cognitive and decision fatigue principle which indicates that each of us only has a limited pool of cognitive resources and so we must be very selective in choosing what activities we engage in. Watch out — many of the studies which displayed “cognitive fatigue” (I assume you actually mean ego depletion) have not been replicated successfully. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2016/03/ego_depletion_an_influential_theory_in_psychology_may_have_just_been_debunked.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story...
  • mjburgess 8y ago
    The general idea even in a loose, more metaphorical sense, holds however. 'Mental fatigue' is well established, and your volition along with mental faculties generally become harder to exercise the longer they are used without break. The specifics are disputed, but we needn't be so specific for the advise to hold.
    • apatters 8y ago
      I don't have a citation for this, but I read something recently about a study where people who had been introduced to the concept of decision-making fatigue experienced it, while people who weren't aware of it didn't. The mind is a wacky thing, I think we know a lot less about it than we believe. One idea I like which seems to have some real world support is that your mental models make all the difference -- if you believe that something's hard and unpleasant, your belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and you'll experience distress when you do it. If you're able to somehow reshape your beliefs, that distress may diminish. Cognitive behavioral therapy is based on this model and has a strong clinical track record.
      • criddell 8y ago
        I certainly experience mental fatigue. I have a hard time believing that if I didn't know about it, I wouldn't experience it.
        • cpoile 8y ago
          We're very good at convincing ourselves of something. Can you be sure it's not just fatigue? (different from willpower fatigue)
      • JangoSteve 8y ago
        I had recently read that too, but it was more specifically about the idea of willpower rather than decision-making fatigue per se. Here is the article where I had seen this, though going back to it, I don't see citations to the studies it's mentioning: > If ego depletion does turn out to be wrong, it’s striking how seemingly well-established it became before more rigorous investigations dispelled the assumptions it rests on. The story of its rise and fall also shows how faulty assumptions about willpower are not just misleading, but can be harmful. Related studies have shown that beliefs about willpower strongly influence self-control: Research subjects who believe in ego depletion (that willpower is a limited resource) show diminishing self-control over the course of an experiment, while people who don’t believe in ego depletion are steady throughout. What’s more, when subjects are manipulated into believing in ego depletion through subtly biased questionnaires at the outset of a study, their performance suffers as well. https://getpocket.com/explore/item/against-willpower https://getpocket.com/explore/item/against-willpower EDIT: It appears the studies are cited at the bottom of the article.
  • rayiner 8y ago
    Really? Dammit. Everything really is a lie.
    • andrei_says_ 8y ago
      Maybe not everything but pretty low replication rates for most psychological experiments. IMO that matter is extremely fluid and dependent on many factors. Just consider the fact that lots of the experiments are done with available volunteers which at Harvard or Stanford or Yale are white uber rich privileged young adults. And that’s only one of the many factors. Another one is the pressure to constantly publish research in order to move forward or be anybody in academia.
• war1025 8y ago
  Reminds me of when I was a kid and raced the same track over and over something like 1000 times on a game to get enough money to buy the fanciest car in the game rather than building my skills enough to do races where I would actually make decent money on each race and only have to do 5 or ten to buy said car.
  • iscrewyou 8y ago
    This was me trying to get the Zonda in one of the Gran Turismo(3?) games. Raced a mustang around the Daytona track sooo many times.
    • bndw 8y ago
      Gran Turismo 2, 200 lap races.
      • avgDev 8y ago
        Oof, I remember those days when my cousin and I would switch every few minutes to complete those races.
        • iscrewyou 8y ago
          Hey! My cousin and I did the same. We still talk and laugh about it to this day.
  • cgriswald 8y ago
    On one of many playthroughs of the original Phantasy Star, I saved up 15K for the Diamond Armor by killing low level baddies and then breezed through the game until the end game.
    • TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Well, you didn't get to "cheat". When we were kids, my cousin figured out a way to make Fallout 2 playthrough much easier. From the starting location, he would immediately head down to a particular late-game location in which you could acquire a Power Armor (the second-best armor in the game). He avoided getting killed by high-level random encounters by discovering that you could escape almost any of them if you mashed "A" key during loading screen - this would guarantee you started the turn-based combat before the random enemy could spot you, and 99% of the times would let you escape. After reaching the target location he'd acquire[0] the Power Armor, and start a quest chain that let you acquire Advanced Power Armor (the very best armor in the game). After that, the game was much easier. Ah, videogames were so much more fun when we were kids, and didn't have that much time pressure. -- [0] - I'm fuzzy on the details here; it probably involved attempting to steal it from the shop and reloading game on failure. I later improved this step by just buying it for money, after exploiting a "repeatedly steal merchandise from a guy and sell it back to him" infinite money generator bug that was available near the starting location.
• wtvanhest 8y ago
  What makes it even more complicated is that in a big org, knowing which tasks are important changes over time and with managers and manager's managers. Surviving and thriving over time requires constant reevaluation.
  • jayalpha 8y ago
    "What makes it even more complicated is that in a big org, knowing which tasks are important changes over time and with managers and manager's managers." No, they don't. There is only one task in your job, to make your boss happy. Strangely, this is rarely achieved by good job performance but often by social skills or idiotic metrics. "How to manage your boss" is worth a read.
    • netwanderer3 8y ago
      This is indeed called managing expectation. There are various strategies one can "manage" their boss in return so that their expectation always remains at an optimal level, allowing them to easily satisfy their boss or even exceed all their expectations. Everything can be manipulated, hacked, or "managed" as we professionally call it, as long as things continue to be operated by human. Even the largest corporations are susceptible and WILL succumb to this. Facebook and fake news are real evidences. Their weaknesses just need to be identified so it can be exploited. External forces can even join together with more resources combined to execute their plans. It's not very difficult to identify weaknesses for many targets today, GREED and PROFIT. Many corporations today only focus on their quarterly growth reports and would do absolutely anything to satisfy their investors. They don't even pay attention to their own customers, let alone those external forces.
      • jayalpha 8y ago
        Spontaneously two former superiors or mine come to my mind. Both unprofessional on an epic scale, they nearly tanked complete companies. Yet they succeeded in the only metric that counts: They made they superiors happy.
    • 8y ago
• cpeterso 8y ago
  For anyone who wants to read more on the difference between productivity and effectiveness you highlighted, I recommend Stephen Covey's classic "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effective_People https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effec...
  • webXL 8y ago
    It's funny that the author ends with a bit of a knock against the book, and mentions that there should be an 8th habit: > I’m pretty sure there’s an eighth habit of highly effective people. They don’t spend all their time reading about the seven habits of highly effective people. Turns out, Covey came up with an 8th habit years ago: 'The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness ... The 8th habit essentially urges: "Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs."' [1] I need to read both, but it seems like Covey's 8th might cover not being obsessed about the first 7. BTW, my kids' elementary charter school has actually incorporated the 7 habits into its curriculum. It will be interesting to see how the graduates do over the course of their careers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Covey#The_8th_Habit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Covey#The_8th_Habit
• tome 8y ago
  > There's a general misconception between being productive and being effective. Indeed: "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." -- Peter Drucker
• amelius 8y ago
  It's a matter of definition. I guess some people define productivity as effectiveness.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • razzimatazz 8y ago
    I think I define them in a big blurry overlap. Somewhere in there is the guy who leaves the communal kitchen in a mess because he is too busy, and the countless people who wont prepare properly for a meeting or respond to admin style requests. I guess those form the category of selfish-effective and selfish-productive people.
• empath75 8y ago
  At work they’re doing some half-assed metrics based on scrum story points, which is fine, I do about as many as anyone else, but it doesn’t really capture that the entire project we’re working on was almost entirely my idea and that a lot of the backlog that everyone is working from was generated by my ideas. I spend 80% of my day reading and thinking and maybe 20% coding at best. I used to think that if I spent more time coding I’d be more productive, but I don’t think I could spend more time coding and still produce anything worth while. I enjoy coding 2-3 hours a day. I absolutely hate coding 7-8 hours a day. I do better work when I’m enjoying it.
• chiefalchemist 8y ago
  > "There's a general misconception between being productive and being effective." Put another way: Focus / attention doesn't help if you're putting such energy into the wrong things. It starts with problem identification. The Five Why is always a great tool. Here's a tongue in cheek site it threw together a couple years ago to help :) http://5xy.co/ http://5xy.co/
• trifidpaw 8y ago
  From my own experience, (so take it with a pinch of salt!) the difference can be a constant loop of reflection and evaluation - is this the most effective thing to do now? And taking time to actually evaluate why I'm doing what I'm doing.
  • brootstrap 8y ago
    I do this twice a day at work, if weather is nice i will take a 10 min walk to reset myself. I like to close out all my fuckin tabs, take stock of WTF happened in the first hours of work, then refocus path. A 10 min walk helps refresh things. Typically go out after about 1.5 to 2 hours of time at the desk.
• fma 8y ago
  I've started an audio book on essentialism. "I can do anything, but not everything" struck out at me.
  • bespoke_engnr 8y ago
    What's the book? Would you recommend it?
    • fma 8y ago
      Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less I'm only through the first chapter. Might be a good read, but harder to implement. So far it's, you gotta say no to things that aren't important. How often has your boss asked you to do unimportant things, and would you be able to say no to any of them? Maybe try to push it off to someone else... But to say no would be harder.
      • bespoke_engnr 8y ago
        Thank you!
• adamisom 8y ago
  >it's imperative to spend time only on tasks that require critical decisions to be made, and to delegate the rest. Nobody ever points out the privilege in this statement. Someone has to be the unfortunate grunt getting delegated to, instead of delegating. If a delegator depends on the grunt, can we really attribute super high productivity to the delegator but not to the grunt? That certainly seems to be implicit when CEOs receive 100x more than the average worker. Perhaps they would be equally competent as delegators given the same opportunities some x years back.
  • loco5niner 8y ago
    Honestly though, you have to climb the ranks somehow. For someone, that delegation is their "break" into the work they want to do.
  • graeme 8y ago
    You don’t have to rise that high to delegate. If you’re working on your own, you can hire good contractors who charge $10-$15 an hour. Barring that, systems work can also be a form of delegation: building a system to automate low value tasks is a way of not doing them. Alao no one ever completes all the tasks they have. So deciding which are the most necessary to do is crucial. The people who delegate and eliminate well at these low stages are more likely to progress to more delegation. Yes, some people still have no ability to do any of that, but I doubt it applies to most people on this forum.
  • fwip 8y ago
    I feel like it's really self-serving, too. "The important work is the work that I, specifically, am good at. Other work that I do not find compelling is unimportant, and should therefore be delegated to less important people." The routine work done by "grunts" is critical to keep any organization running, whether it's a Fortune 500 company or a family of four. Lots of jobs (customer support, widget assembly, laundry, dishes) are unglamorous but vitally important.
• blazespin 8y ago
  Yeah, but in order to make effective decisions there are tonnes of tiny little tasks that you have to take on in order to do that. The idea that you can just go by gut is ludicrous. There is a glacier of work beneath the water that needs to be done in order to make effective decisions. Solving high class problems without doing your homework is an effective way to leading a project to disaster.. "complete one or two tasks in a very short time during their day" these are the people that ruin teams. Also, the difference between a startup succeeds and one that fails is very simple - execution and productivity. Grand ideas don't solve customer problems. Yes, attention management is important obviously, but that's a part of time management. You also have to grind to solve all the problems that come up. The whole thing is nonsense wishful thinking that you can just make the hard work disappear.
• fwip 8y ago
  There are many tasks that are both relatively mindless and important.
• dalex00 8y ago
  Just use the term efficiency because than effort and impact covered. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficiency https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficiency
• agumonkey 8y ago
  There was a post recently about a mindset where you'd try your luck in life sorting options by ROI. I found that interesting because I spend aeons on things that will be almost useless right away, instead of doing that maybe simpler, maybe less exciting but a lot more rewarding in terms of comfort. I guess my brain should be rewired from artistic perfectionist pride to capital (cough) pride.
• dwinston 8y ago
  > To remain highly effective, not just being productive, particularly for a project manager, it's imperative to spend time only on tasks that require critical decisions to be made, and to delegate the rest. This mirrors Andy Grove's practice (detailed in his book High Output Management) of focusing on "high-leverage" activities, where "leverage" he defines as the ratio of output/impact versus time spent.
• michalu 8y ago
  Indeed, and we should all keep what you say in mind. But in order to be effective you first need to be productive. A lot of people struggle with focus, motivation and energy to do things.